


Clockwork Heart

by oharlem



Category: Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Drabble, Gen, Tony Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-09
Updated: 2012-12-09
Packaged: 2017-11-20 18:05:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/588194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oharlem/pseuds/oharlem
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"That day- the day I woke up running on batteries and not blood- was the day I lost my heart."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Clockwork Heart

**Author's Note:**

> This is just a little Tony Stark character study drabble I came up with a few months ago. I never got around to posting it until now, so, enjoy.~  
> -Misfit

People always ask me about my time in Afghanistan, about how I survived, about the piece of metal embedded in my chest. I can show off and tell of how I was hooked up to a car battery, I can list elements and components and complicated names, but the reality is that it is so much simpler... and so much darker.

Forget for just a moment about palladium and ionic bonds and energy fields, forget about radiation and shrapnel and human anatomy, forget about everything you've ever heard about me.

My heart is dying, it is perpetually bleeding in the way only human hearts can. There are wires and gears and electricity keeping me alive. Everything, everything, about my existence is circumstantial. From the amount of oxygen in my blood to the quality of the equipment in my chest, I am surviving solely on science. No faith-never faith.

I have a clockwork heart that ticks in time with the rhythm of technology- ever growing, ever expanding, ever calculating.

That day- the day I woke up running on batteries and not blood- was the day I lost my heart. Sometimes it hurts, my clockwork heart, a phantom pain deep in the pit of my chest. But I know-oh, do I know- that there is nothing in this world that could give me back the sensation of a proper nervous system, of a proper limbic system, of a proper heart.

So, when people ask what it was like back then, when they ask how I felt and how I feel now, I don't respond. Not because I don't want to talk about it, not because I don't remember, but because I don't know. Because, by now, I have forgotten.

My clockwork heart and I have forgotten how to feel.


End file.
